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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



VISITORS AT THE AMERICAN PARTY S CAMP IN THE CORDILLERA DE CHILLA 



The Ecuadoreans are a very friendly people and fond of paying visits. This family 

 arrived very early in the morning, when the author was absent, but waited for his return at 

 noon, and then spent the afternoon. To these dwellers of the interior Andes the tin cans 

 which were thrown out from the camp were as gifts from the gods, and the camp never 

 suffered from an accumulation of such things. 



hundred feet. It was early morning and 

 cold, the trail was over a high, interandean 

 plateau at about 11,000 feet elevation, and 

 I sat on my saddle mule, bundled up and 

 trying to keep warm, while overhead a 

 great black bird, seemingly superior to 

 those forces of nature which were so 

 bleakly apparent to me, sailed majestically 

 up into a stiff wind, rocking slightly to 

 the gusts, its only visible wing movement 

 a slight spreading or closing of the pri- 

 maries. 



DENSE EORESTS ON BOTH ANDEAN SLOPES 



Along the lower slopes of both the 

 Western and the Eastern Andes are to be 

 found great expanses of forest, that of 

 the Eastern Andes extending unbroken 

 for many hundred miles. 



A forest of this type at its best is a 

 dense tangle of vegetation, a green man- 

 tle which covers the hillsides so com- 

 pletely that it is impossible for any one 

 looking out over the landscape to see a 

 square foot of open ground. 



The principal forest trees are large and 

 very tall, most of them of a type that 

 branches widely, so that the leaves form 

 a continuous canopy overhead. 



Most of these trees are varieties un- 

 known to northerners, among the com- 

 moner of them being the rubber-tree, wild 

 fig, silk-cotton, or ceiba, and mahogany. 



Many of the trees have great, wide- 

 flung root systems, which send out writh- 

 ing members, like the tentacles of an 

 octopus, to twist about and seek out any 

 crevice on the hillside. 



AN ENDLESS NETWORK OF CREEPERS 



Smaller trees establish themselves un- 

 der the forest giants wherever enough 

 sunlight filters through the mosaic above 

 to support them. 



Over all of the trees, large and small, 

 runs a vast and seemingly endless net- 

 work of creepers and vines, bejucos the 

 natives call them. These lianas are of all 

 sizes and descriptions, from the merest 

 thread-like filaments to hawser-like vines 



